Heather Stephens Grossman begged a judge to keep her ex-husband away from her and their three children.
Grossman told of an anonymous telephone call to her Boca Raton home in which a male voice threatened her life.
“I’m scared of him,” Grossman told a judge in a court custody hearing also attended by her ex-husband, Ron Samuels.
Samuels, 49, was never linked to the threats, and an investigation by Boca Raton police could not determine who made the call.
Her plea came one week before she was gunned down in mid-day Boca Raton traffic. Grossman, 31, remains in the hospital, perhaps permanently paralyzed. Police have made one arrest in the shooting, a convict who gave them a tenuous link to Samuels. He has not been charged nor has he been interviewed by police.
Court records in Santa Rosa County, the Florida Panhandle county where Heather and Samuels once lived, tell the story of a fairy-tale romance turned tragic amid a crumbling marriage and allegations of infidelity, child abuse and death threats.
On Oct. 14 at Federal Highway and Yamato Road, a green Thunderbird pulled up alongside the car carrying Heather and her husband of four months, John Grossman, 47, the son of Minnesota Vikings part-owner Bud Grossman.
Witnesses said a man leaned out of the Thunderbird’s passenger window, aimed a rifle at the closed driver’s side window and pulled the trigger. The shot grazed John Grossman’s chin, and tore through Heather Grossman’s neck. She slumped over, not moving.
Police traced the car to Hugh Estess, who owns a Hollywood insurance company. He has not been charged. The one person arrested in the case, Eddie Stafford, 43, of Hollywood, a convicted drug felon, told police a strange tale.
Stafford, who is charged with conspiracy to commit murder, said he and two other men had been hired by a man named “Ron” to take out a “contract” on Heather Grossman and her new husband. Given a photo lineup, Stafford identified Ron as Samuels, a police affidavit said.
Samuels’ attorney, Jeffrey Weiner of Miami, said that his client “has been trashed” by Stafford’s statement.
“I think that the Boca Raton Police obviously have serious concerns about Mr. Stafford’s credibility, because there is no arrest warrant,” Weiner said. “He has never been interviewed by police.”
Boca Raton Police Officer Lori Croy said Stafford’s statement is “a lead that we are adamantly pursuing.”
She said police expect to make more arrests, and will not interview Samuels and others until the “appropriate time in the investigation.”
One thing is clear in court documents from the Santa Rosa County court near Pensacola: The custody fight between Samuels and Heather Grossman became increasingly acrimonious over the years. In the weeks before and following the crime, there was a flurry of activity in the case.
A week before the attack, court records show, Samuels tried to regain visitation rights. Instead of awarding custody, Judge Paul A. Rasmussen found Samuels in contempt of court and ordered him jailed unless he paid $10,000 in overdue child support.
“How important is it that you see your children?” asked his attorney, Donald Sasser, during the hearing.
“It’s very important to me,” Samuels said.
“How important?” the attorney asked.
“That’s the most important thing in the world to me,” Samuels said. “More important than anything else.”
In that same Oct. 7 hearing, Heather Grossman begged the court not to allow Samuels back into her children’s life.
“. . .They’re scared and I’m scared. I’m scared of him,” she said. “We’ve had things put on our phone and we tried to trace them: ‘You’re both going to die. I’m going to kill you.’ “
John and Heather Grossman reported the call, which they said came on April 3, to Boca Raton police. Authorities traced the call to a hotel room in Illinois, but never found out who made it.
In court, Sasser said there was no proof that Samuels made the call or threatened the Grossmans.
As the one-time all-America cheerleader lay critically injured in the hospital, Samuels moved quickly to assert his innocence and gain custody.
The day after the shooting, Samuels passed a lie detector test, administered by a private technician with Samuels’ attorney present, to prove to the court he was not involved in the crime, court documents said.
Two days after the shooting, he wrote checks for $13,060 to satisfy the contempt charge. Samuels had until mid-November to pay the money or go to jail.
Finally, Samuels asked the court to give him what he wanted most: his three young children. He filed papers asking for emergency, permanent custody of their 8-year-old son and 6-year old twin son and daughter.
The next custody hearing is scheduled for January.
Behind the recent tragedy lay a romance that once flourished between the lonely millionaire and the petite blonde flight attendant he married.
Court records in Santa Rosa County tell this story:
Samuels was 40 and the owner of a successful Toyota dealership in Pensacola when he married Heather Stephens in 1988. He was worth about $6 million. She was 22, four months pregnant and far away from the small Minnesota town where she grew up.
For Samuels, the pregnancy seemed miraculous, and he showered his new bride with diamonds, rubies, and the best clothes and furnishings money could buy. He even converted from Judaism to Catholicism, so the two could be married in beautiful Saint Ann’s Catholic Church in Gulf Breeze, as she wished.
A few years earlier, he suspected he suffered from infertility, because his girlfriend had never become pregnant. He consulted physicians, court records show, and they advised him he would likely never father children.
“. . .He was ecstatic about being able to have children after so many years of believing he was infertile,” psychologist James Larson told the court in a child-custody deposition.
Samuels was expansively generous in those years when his Pensacola business, Ron Samuels Toyota Inc., did well. Fellow auto dealers said he wrote large checks to local charitable causes. He was a major advertiser on local television and in newspapers. His family had everything, including a $500,000 brick home overlooking the Santa Rosa Sound, near Pensacola.
“It took a lot of money to keep her, I will say that,” a fellow dealer said of Samuels’ wife. “They never wanted for anything.”
The man said he did not want his name used because he does not want to be involved in the affair.
But the relationship soon faltered. Friends pointed to the age difference. Samuels had other suspicions.
He told Larson that he believed Heather had other romantic relationships, and was only with him for his money, Larson said during a deposition.
On March 31, 1994, the two divorced after five years of marriage.
Samuels became depressed, and his business foundered. He sold it by the summer of 1995. His weight ballooned to nearly 400 pounds, and his health suffered, he said in court documents. His home was damaged by Hurricane Opal, and he allowed the bank to foreclose rather than do repairs.
He started dating Deborah North, a paralegal at his divorce attorney’s office, in late 1994. On Jan. 19, 1996, the two married. They moved to Cayman Islands, where he said he lost weight and recovered his health.
In September, they moved to Boca Raton.
Also in September, he told the court that he had no assets, earned just $20,000 a year as a purchasing agent, and owed more than $2 million. His custody battles alone had cost about $80,000, he said.
After the divorce, Heather returned to Minnesota, living with her parents from February 1996 until March 1997.
It was during those months that she started dating John Grossman. Grossman, who worked in his father’s car business and now owns the Miami-based Major Entertainment Corp., married Heather on June 1.
The Grossman family declined tocomment, saying police told them not to talk about the case.
Grossman took on the expenses of raising Heather’s children, including regular counseling sessions to help them cope with the turmoil of the divorce.
But the new family continued to face custody battles.
Samuels accused John Grossman of abusing his children through excessive discipline. Authorities found no cause for Samuels’ complaints.
Earlier, Samuels had complained to authorities that, while in Minnesota, Heather’s parents also subjected the children to abuse.
Those allegations also were determined to be unfounded.
Now, the family conducts a daily vigil at the Delray Medical Center, where Heather Grossman lies closely guarded, in serious condition.
Meanwhile, Samuels continues his quest for his children.
“The kids have been kept from him and their location has been kept a secret,” said Weiner. “Since the mother is not able to care for them, they should be with their dad.”
